The Peripheral Nerve Function in Chronic Renal Failure

A material of 109 patients with varying degrees of chronic renal failure has been divided into two groups according to the presence (56 patients) or absence (53 patients) of clinical signs of neuropathy. A relationship between the primary renal diseases and neuropathy could not be demonstrated either in females or males. In both groups the two sexes were comparable with respect to age, renal function, and degree of azotemia. There was a significant predominance of males among patients with neuropathy. A multivariate discriminant analysis comprising age, creatinine clearance, serum creatinine and urea, and serum sodium and potassium levels, failed to demonstrate any significant difference between females with and without neuropathy. In male patients a significant difference was present. The creatinine clearance and the age were ranked as the most significant discriminating variates. The combined use of all six variates did not improve the discriminative effectiveness, but the creatinine clearance could be replaced by the serum creatinine concentration. It is concluded that the biological variates, sex and age greatly influence the breakthrough of clinical signs of neuropathy at any given degree of renal failure.